part of the reason why hardly anyone deploys in europe in a multiplayer game is because of the start positions there: it's likely that no-one has more than 3 or 4 out of the 12 regions, in which case just about any other bonus is easier. more on this once i'm back from holiday. happy conquering in the meantime!

iancanton wrote:part of the reason why hardly anyone deploys in europe in a multiplayer game is because of the start positions there: it's likely that no-one has more than 3 or 4 out of the 12 regions, in which case just about any other bonus is easier. more on this once i'm back from holiday. happy conquering in the meantime!

I'm willing to discuss eliminating some or all of the starts altogether, but months ago when it was decided to code europe as starts we had good reasons for doing so. While it does make conquering Europe a bitch, it guarantees that a variety of players will have access to the Colonial Powers bonuses.

Here's a thought... what if we coded starts, but coded fewer than eight? Because in a seven or eight player game on this map it is already highly unlikely that a singl player is going to score a dominating start in either europe or the far east. Eight player games start with only 8 terits each, seven player games start with 9, and six players start with 11. A good start in Europe would be, what, 6 of the 12 European territories? There's less than a .02% chance (yes that's right, less than 1%) of this happening. And there's less than a 2% chance that any one player would score three or more of the six european imperial powers.

But as soon as you get to six players, there's a 5% chance of somebody getting three or more European powers, and about 10% chance of scoring half of Japan... so maybe we just code six starts, with two territories per start? The six powers, and six eastern countries.

that would mean... umm... 25 starting territories/player in a 1v1, instead of 23 if we had no starts at all. (Whatever - 1v1s are a joke on big maps anyway, as I've said many times.) Adding starts has no effect on games of other sizes.

Anyway, the earlier changes have been forwarded to Andy. Changing the starts is easy as it has zero effect on games already underway. We can has this out when iancanton is back from what I'm sure is an alcoholiday.

1. Naval Superiority is pretty useless as far as I can see. One player in ur gametook it and bombarded 3 colonies.. costing my partner and I builds for India andSE Asia.. okay.. but it cost him whatever he needed to do that,, and he was left with6 on the ship.. which disappeared. Sooo.. I figure we came out ahead.

2. I am rather surprised that there is no sea movement between the Home country and a colony or between colonies. This is very a-historical, as everybody.. the Brits especially..transferred troops (from India to the Sudan.. England to S. Africa vs the Boers..and everybody to Peking for the Boxer rebellion.. )

I'd like to see something like "In Transit" boxes.. you could reinforce from any port toa 'in transit' box.. and from the box to any port you own. (No amphibious assaults)

Some of the territorial groups could be better colored.. the pale pastels need to be not quite so pale..

Shertenn wrote:1. Naval Superiority is pretty useless as far as I can see. One player in ur gametook it and bombarded 3 colonies.. costing my partner and I builds for India andSE Asia.. okay.. but it cost him whatever he needed to do that,, and he was left with6 on the ship.. which disappeared. Sooo.. I figure we came out ahead.

You only see Naval Superiority as useless because you haven't figured out how to use it yet.

If you take Naval Superiority, you're supposed to bombard until you have no armies left. If you have armies left over and there's no enemy territories to bombard, then just bombard neutral territories next to your own troops so you can take them later.

2. I am rather surprised that there is no sea movement between the Home country and a colony or between colonies. This is very a-historical, as everybody.. the Brits especially..transferred troops (from India to the Sudan.. England to S. Africa vs the Boers..and everybody to Peking for the Boxer rebellion.. )

Naval Superiority does this, but if you didn't have a presence in the area in the first place i.e. an adjacent colony to conquer the 1 neutral then you shouldn't be able to occupy the area. Realistically speaking.

We went over all of this months ago... we discussed sea units that could occupy colonies, trading companies that could be taken back by the colonial states, etc. The basic system we have in place came after weeks and weeks of discussion, and no major change will be made now. If you don't show up, you don't get to make the rules.

As for the bug, it was noted in Sugs and Bugs a few weeks ago and has been brought to the attention of the site admins.

oaktown wrote:But as soon as you get to six players, there's a 5% chance of somebody getting three or more European powers, and about 10% chance of scoring half of Japan... so maybe we just code six starts, with two territories per start? The six powers, and six eastern countries.

that would mean... umm... 25 starting territories/player in a 1v1, instead of 23 if we had no starts at all. (Whatever - 1v1s are a joke on big maps anyway, as I've said many times.) Adding starts has no effect on games of other sizes.

6 sets of 2 start positions is a rather weak tool in 1v1 for the purpose of preventing player 1 from starting with a 3-region empire bonus because 8 of the 12 possible start positions are allocated normally, just as if they're ordinary regions.

i suggest exactly 3 sets of 2 start positions, being an italian with a portuguese colony, a dutch with an italian colony and a portuguese with a dutch colony, with every other region being normal. this results, unless i'm mistaken (i'd better ask yeti_c for the definitive answer!), in 23 total starting regions (including 2 start positions) for each player. dropping the 3-region empire bonuses will thereby be made impossible in 1v1.

by the way, it wasn't an alcoholiday - my other half made sure of that!

Oaktown, I thought you were going to change the map and make Canton British? Doesn't look like that has happened yet.

As I have continued to play this board (as is) my opinion has become more firmly entrenched...this board does not work for 7 or 8 players. 2 or max. 3 players have a shot for the eastern continents, while everyone else is left scrambling fruitlessly for the african colonies. British and French are impossible to get. There is a whole lot of wilderness to get (pointlessly) lost in in Europe and Russia. Maybe playing spoils would make it more feasible, I dunno. Something needs to be done to make the colonial bonuses easier to achieve in large games.

Just to clarify my earlier point about the continents...one player is likely to get the Middle East, one will get Japan, and one will be working on Oceania and/or S Asia. so that leaves huge swaths of the board with no strategic purpose (dead zones). the players trying to get German, Portuguese, and Italian are killing each other for tiny little bonuses. And because those same players are the ones entrenched in the west, they are the ones likely to be in a position to get naval superiority, which is really hard when you are only getting 3 a turn. Which makes it that much harder to stop the snowball effect in the east. See where I am going with this?

oaktown wrote:But as soon as you get to six players, there's a 5% chance of somebody getting three or more European powers, and about 10% chance of scoring half of Japan... so maybe we just code six starts, with two territories per start? The six powers, and six eastern countries.

that would mean... umm... 25 starting territories/player in a 1v1, instead of 23 if we had no starts at all. (Whatever - 1v1s are a joke on big maps anyway, as I've said many times.) Adding starts has no effect on games of other sizes.

6 sets of 2 start positions is a rather weak tool in 1v1 for the purpose of preventing player 1 from starting with a 3-region empire bonus because 8 of the 12 possible start positions are allocated normally, just as if they're ordinary regions.

i suggest exactly 3 sets of 2 start positions, being an italian with a portuguese colony, a dutch with an italian colony and a portuguese with a dutch colony, with every other region being normal. this results, unless i'm mistaken (i'd better ask yeti_c for the definitive answer!), in 23 total starting regions (including 2 start positions) for each player. dropping the 3-region empire bonuses will thereby be made impossible in 1v1.

by the way, it wasn't an alcoholiday - my other half made sure of that!

2 sets of 2 are start positions, plus 65 unallocated regions and 1 fixed starting neutral. do the 65 unallocated regions go 21 to player 1, 21 to player 2 and 23 to neutral, making a total of 23 regions to player 1, 23 to player 2 and 24 to neutral (the alternative is 22 to player 1, 22 to player 2 and 21 to neutral)?

if you are able to attack naval superiority and take it over from one of the european powers, you should also be able to fortify back from naval superiority. i played this map for the first time and that lack of being able to reinforce back just gave the game to another team.

Brown304 wrote:if you are able to attack naval superiority and take it over from one of the european powers, you should also be able to fortify back from naval superiority. i played this map for the first time and that lack of being able to reinforce back just gave the game to another team.

A note has been added to the map, and the new images and XML were sent to Andy and Lack weeks ago. Still waiting on an update.

As for additional changes to the starting positions, I'd like to see how the update works and then discuss. In the end we're talking about starting positions, not something that will change games mid-stream, so they're easy to tweak.

on-topic:I saw somebody say that because of the starting positions in Europe, nobody will deploy there because it's unlikely to get Europe.however people will be fussing over the European powers, so starting positions are still great

I love the starting positions, and they reduce the unfairness that can happen in 1v1s (and not only 1v1s probably) I wish this would happen in more maps!so let me check if I get it right.there are certain territory pairs that one can get? are there bonuses that you can't get at the start of the game or do the starting positions just reduce the chance of this?

On a note about Europe---in a 4 player game, everyone was neglecting Europe and Naval Superiority, so while owning a small bonus in Africa, I managed to hold Europe for a few rounds as well, and enjoyed it.

karelpietertje wrote:I love the starting positions, and they reduce the unfairness that can happen in 1v1s (and not only 1v1s probably) I wish this would happen in more maps!so let me check if I get it right. there are certain territory pairs that one can get? are there bonuses that you can't get at the start of the game or do the starting positions just reduce the chance of this?

I think that as we collectively get a better grasp of how 1v1 games are skewed and how to best work starting positions you'll see more of them. They are especially useful for balancing 1v1 games, since you can code two or three starts and the starts will be ignored in larger games.

On this map (by the latest XML which is NOT yet in live play) there are eight starting positions, and each position has two territories: one territory in Europe, one in Japan/China/Oceania. In an eight player game each player will get one pair, guaranteeing each player at least one territory on each end of the map, and making it impossible for a player to start with all of Japan or all of Europe. In a six player game, for example, two of the starting positions will be ignored and those territories assigned randomly (since eight can't be evenly divided by six). But in a four player game each player will receive two of the positions, guaranteeing each player at least two territories in Europe and two in the east. Likewise in a 1v1 each player will receive four territories... which actually means that while Europe will be split in half, a player can score all of Japan on the drop, but the odds are pretty low.

Eastern Hemisphere could be any time in that location plus it doesn't have any excitement to it. Read "End of Empires" and immediately the pulse quickens and anticipation builds. Can I, possibly, be the one to end them?

oaktown wrote:I think that as we collectively get a better grasp of how 1v1 games are skewed and how to best work starting positions you'll see more of them. They are especially useful for balancing 1v1 games, since you can code two or three starts and the starts will be ignored in larger games.

On this map (by the latest XML which is NOT yet in live play) there are eight starting positions, and each position has two territories: one territory in Europe, one in Japan/China/Oceania. In an eight player game each player will get one pair, guaranteeing each player at least one territory on each end of the map, and making it impossible for a player to start with all of Japan or all of Europe. In a six player game, for example, two of the starting positions will be ignored and those territories assigned randomly (since eight can't be evenly divided by six). But in a four player game each player will receive two of the positions, guaranteeing each player at least two territories in Europe and two in the east. Likewise in a 1v1 each player will receive four territories... which actually means that while Europe will be split in half, a player can score all of Japan on the drop, but the odds are pretty low.

thanks. look forward to the update (also because the army of Naval Superiorrity seems curretntly a bit wrong, and the army of Rhodesia is not in place either )lack, Im begging

EDIT: NEVER MIND i was actually playing while lack updated it, and he did the army positions first and then the map. thanks lack

Meatcat wrote:Bad name for the map - too generic. Should be more explicit, something like Europe's Colonial Powers before WW1.

here's my logic behind the current name...

On the map itself the title is "End of Empires" - a title which is given some explanation in the next line. The explanation includes the fact that the region being represented is the Eastern Hemisphere.

However, for the game finder page the map is labeled "Eastern Hemisphere" because that's how I imagine most folks will remember this map... 'I'd like to play that map of teh eastern hemisphere... what's it called?'

There are some maps at CC that I have trouble finding because they are, in my opinion, poorly named. If you want to play Iraq, it's not under "Iraq" but "Battle." At what point has anybody called the real Iraq war the Battle for Iraq?